MAP27: Hell Sewage (Claustrophobia 1024)

MAP27: Hell Sewage is the twenty-seventh map of Claustrophobia 1024. It was designed by Joonas Äijälä (Jodwin), and uses a MIDI "Punk Rock Remix" of the Hyrule Castle music from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, composed by CarboHydroM.

Essentials
Kill the zombieman and imp in front of you, take the plasma gun between them then open the west door to get outside, where more of the same monsters are waiting. Open either of the large south doors to find some shotgun guys guarding a rocket launcher, kill them along with the demons that teleport behind you then open the smaller south-west door to find a revenant and demon guarding a chaingun and the red keycard.

Go back to the starting point, killing more zombies that have appeared outside on the way, then open the east door to enter a small room with a red key door; open it with caution as there is a demon waiting behind it, and a second demon will ambush you from behind. Go round the corner to find a button and press it, then fight through some zombies and imps to get back to the rocket launcher room where the north-west door has now opened. Go through and follow the hallway past more zombies to another door, open it and turn left to see a revenant and Hell knight (or two more revenants on Ultra-Violence and Nightmare skill levels) guarding another button. Press the button and quickly step back to avoid the chaingunners that teleport in, then go back outside and head to the now-open west door to get the blue keycard.

Taking the blue key releases chaingunners, lost souls and one or two pain elementals outside. Go back to the rocket launcher room and open the south-east door to face a few shotgun guys and a revenant, then open either of the large doors here and check behind the bars in the next room to find the yellow keycard. Kill the chaingunners that are released into the corridor behind you, then go back to where you found the red keycard (noting the revenants and knights that have teleported in from outside) and open the yellow key door here to see a knight guarding a backpack and super shotgun; a revenant teleports behind you when you approach the items. Open the nearby door and kill some waiting revenants, knight and zombies, then go down the steps to see a baron of Hell guarding a button.

Pressing the button will release one or two arch-viles into the rocket launcher room, as well as opening a compartment of imps near the red key area. Fight your way back to where you found the yellow key and kill the imps that teleport in behind you, as well as any cacodemons that emerge from the hole in the floor, then drop down the hole to see a baron guarding the exit button.

Secrets
There are no official secrets on this map.

Speedrunning
As this level does not contain official secrets, the NM 100S category is redundant.

Current records
The records for the map at the Doom Speed Demo Archive are:

The data was last verified in its entirety on December 21, 2021.

Things
This level contains the following numbers of things per skill level:

Inspiration and development
Hell Sewage was the author Joonas Äijälä's (Jodwin) first serious mapping effort since his previous release in May 2007. Work on the map began on October 17th 2008, and the first version was finished and submitted to Claustrophobia 1024 three days later. The map was inspired by the idea of the player fleeing from an overrun facility through a sewage system. Rest of the map was built around that premise with the goal of creating a 1024 map with a slight Hell Revealed-feeling. The map went through more playtesting than any of the author's previous creations, utilizing help from the author's friends. During this playtesting the item placement in the map was tweaked a lot, as the testers and the map author had greatly differing views on the map's difficulty level. Eventually the playtesting resulted in inclusion of the early plasma gun and the lowering walls on the map's arch-vile battle, which were considered to improve the map's playability and the number of tactical options given to the player.

The level's automap was disabled until the last Claustrophobia 1024 test builds, except for a few scattered lines. When asked about the automap, the author admitted he did have a reason for disabling the automap, but he had already forgotten what the reason actually was. With the author's permission the automap was then made visible, as it was widely considered detrimental to the map to have it disabled.